Classical philosophy and Darwinian biology are far more compatible than is usually assumed. In fact, looking at either from the standpoint of the other can enrich and deepen our appreciation of both. From a Darwinian point of view, the theories of Plato and Aristotle deserve to be taken very seriously. From the classical point of view, Darwinian biology is much less reductionist than its enemies suppose.

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Moral Molecules & Moral Emotions

Aristotle may have been the
most dedicated opponent of reductionism in the history of philosophy.He stoutly attacked the view that form could
be reduced to matter or teleological processes to chance.I am with the Philosopher on this sort of
thing.

It is interesting to note that
Aristotle was nonetheless a bit more materialistic in his analysis than is
modern Darwinian biology.Aristotle
believed in spontaneous generation.Lacking a robust experimental apparatus, he supposed that life was routinely
generated from lifeless matter under special conditions of temperature,
moisture, etc.For that to be true, a
lot more of the basic information that makes up organic structures would have
to be pre-loaded in the material constituents or would be provided by chance
than is supposed by modern biology.According to the latter, for most of the history of life, you first have
to have a living organism to get another living organism.

I have been reading a very
interesting review essay by Iain Dewitt: “Moral
Matter”, from the American Interest.Dewitt reviews recent books by Patricia Churchland, Jonathan Haidt,
Robert Kurzban, and Michael Gazzaniga.He begins with Churchland’s Braintrust:
What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality.

Churchland addresses morality from several perspectives, but
her main interest is in the neurobiological foundation of morality. This
centers on discussion of oxytocin, a hormone traditionally appreciated for its
role in the female reproductive cycle, especially in milk letdown. Beginning in
the 1970s, interest grew in this hormone as a regulator of maternal and mate
bonding—a love hormone, as it were. In recent years, interest has grown as
research has established oxytocin’s role in bonding and its concrete linkages
to trusting behavior.

That is the kind of that most
disturbs many critics of “scientism.” If
there is a molecular basis for morality, does this not indicate the complete
victory of materialism over the soul?

Parallel to this
neurobiological analysis is a simplification (if not a reduction) of the moral
emotions that underwrite cooperation between groups of unrelated
individuals.

Churchland describes her project as examining the platform
upon which morality is constructed. Her thesis is that the platform is maternal
attachment to young. The largest single factor in human brain evolution is our
exaggerated juvenile phase, during much of which we are helpless. This surely
exerted strong selective pressure for parental behavior, care for kin.
Churchland argues this is the forerunner of care for kith and strangers.

Here, the larger set of moral
emotions is seen as dependent upon a simpler, more general motive.We can care about strangers because we can
extend our attachment to our young beyond the limits of this most basic
community.

It occurs to me that there are
two very different kinds of analysis going on here.One is the connection between mental states and
the molecular constituents of brain states.The other is the connection between less self-interested motives and
more self-interested ones.The two types
of analysis are not necessarily dependent upon one another and neither
necessarily implies reductionism.

Unless there is a ghost in the
machine, all states of soul and mind must have a basis in matter.It may well turn out that there are a few key
molecules that play a very large role in the neurological processes that are
the substratum of changes in consciousness.Those molecules supply part of the information that makes up a soul;
however, they supply only part of it.The level of matter is the level of the medium in which the information
that makes up the soul is substantiated.This suggests precisely that the soul cannot be reduced to matter.

Whether complex social emotions
are indeed refined and enlarged versions of simpler ones is an entirely
independent question.If there is indeed
a Moral Molecule, as Paul J. Zak argues in the title of his recent book, then
the material substratum of emotions is simpler than we might have
expected.That tells us nothing about
whether or which one emotion is the biological ancestor of another.

Churchland’s thesis that
maternal attachment is the “platform upon which morality is constructed” is
plausible enough.We can see why it is
not reductionist by considering Aristotle’s analysis in the beginning of the Politics.He held that the community of man and woman
and the parental community are the most basic human communities.He denies that the more complex communities
of clan, village, and the complete political community are only larger versions
of the former.The larger associations
have their own distinct functions that cannot be reduced to those of the most
basic associations and accordingly they require very different kinds of government.

Churchland’s evolutionary
account of the social emotions is perfectly compatible with Aristotle’s
argument.Evolution indeed works by
working on pre-existing biological structures and pathways.It does so by frequently adapting them to new
functions.What was once a second set of
wings in beetles becomes something very different: a retractable set of armored
plates.If what was once a simple mental
schema for child care is refined and enlarged to work for partnerships with
strangers, the latter is now a new schema with a function that certainly cannot
be reduced to the functions of its ancestral schema.

Evolutionary biology is
reductionist only in the sense that it allows for an analysis of biological
phenomena on the level of chemistry as well as on higher levels.It is anti-reductionist in the sense that it
resists reducing the latter to the former.